There’s a hearing coming up next Wednesday in the Senate on the issue of piracy. CNET is reporting that Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) is attempting to line up support from Google and other major tech companies to support some new legislation aimed at stopping piracy. The support of major online ad networks and ISPs will be crucial since a lot of the enforcement for such a bill would fall to them. It would be a new version of a bill Leahy introduced last fall, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeit Act (COICA). That bill got broad support coming out of committee but was derailed by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) who lined up with advocacy groups complaining that the bill would infringe on free speech and an open internet. Tech companies were reluctant to support it because they didn’t want to be extensions of a law enforcement effort.
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